ak48

Sounds rough. Hope you figure something out soon.

Ouch, it sucks that your callous department head makes fun of your writing. There are really only 2 ways to get better at writing: read more and write more! Do you generally use outlines when you write? Or do you just start writing? For some people, it's much better for them to plan an outline first (maybe paragraph by paragraph). Then take it to your adviser or somebody else and ask them for critique. Practice practice practice!

Sorry to hear that, but there's an inherent risk in applying to 1 school only. Did you really believe that your UG school was the ONLY program that you wanted to do? I know lots of people apply a second time, so don't give up if thats what you truly want to do.

I agree with your evaluation!

Oops, my bad! You were the one I was looking for! I'm hoping that it won't be a big deal for me. For me, a school's social life is secondary to the academic quality for a PhD program, but obviously still important! (especially for us, ahem, single people out there). From the website, it seemed like Princeton was its own town out in the middle of the woods instead of in the city . The fact that the town is named after the school kinda leads me to believe that there's not much there outside the school. Did you go to a bustling undergrad? I went to a decently sized school (~5500 undergrad) that was in a rather crime-heavy/dangerous city so I never really wandered too much in college.

I'm also single with no children/family to support, so living on low stipend is less of a problem than if I were married with children, obviously.

I'm still applying so my experience is obviously limited. I don't know what field you are in, but I think that the differences between stipends in Grad School are "peanuts" compared to what you may be making in 10-20 years from now. Unless the difference is really significant (like a VERY good fellowship), I don't think it should factor that heavily. As long as both are "livable" stipends, I'd probably go for the more prestigious school on the assumption that it would bring better opportunities in the future. This is obviously not always the case. So ironically, my answer is like "don't follow the money (now). follow the better opportunity (which leads to money later!)"

Maybe it's better to go to the Princeton thread in "Meet and Greet" but Electrical Engineering PHD also! I was hoping for IC/fab but I don't have that much background in it, so that 1st year of classes will be crucial!

Hey tarrman, it sounds like from a different thread that you visited EE and liked it a lot! How was the town itself? i got admitted and it's pretty high on the list for me. Did it take long to get from Newark to the campus?

If you could afford it, shell out the money for a macbook pro. you can use bootcamp to install both OS X and Windows on it at the same time, so you won't run into any "Windows only" problems. If not a macbook pro, the Lenovo Thinkpad is highly regarded for its quality.

call them by phone and explain what happened.

i see no downside to politely inquiring where in the application process they are in.

Minor annoyance: when schools don't send out emails telling us to check the website when decisions are ready. Especially if you are a top computer science school. Sending out a form letter to everybody on the application list should be common courtesy, and easily feasible for the top minds in the country.

Why wouldn't you email him back? Even if you aren't interested now, he still went into the special effort to check for your name among the applicant list (even if there was a mixup somewhere). Also, I always thought it was common decency to always respond to emails.

I applied for PhD, not Masters. So far, I got accepted by 2 places, one with pre-admit interviews with professors, one without any contact until the admit letter. I also got rejected by 2 places that never gave me word until the rejection. I interviewed with one other place and will hear back shortly.

Hope to see some of y'all during the March (29?) Visit day!

It's still helpful for the rest of us to see what may happen in such situations, what other perspectives are, and what kinds of feelings to anticipate once we start our program.

I'm having a similar choice to make, and i'm not sure if our fields of study lead to different answers (I'm engineering, it looks like you are psychology). Could you get the same set of skills from either place? I'm leaning towards the prestigious choice because at the end of the day, it's the school that shows up on your CV/resume, not the professor. Unless your less-prestigious professor is a VERY well known name in your field, I'd figure you'd be more marketable from the better name place. (Also, does one professor have better connections to industry/academia where you want to work?) That said, you still need to FINISH your PhD, which means if your adviser is a poor match you may quit the PhD midway. If you can envision yourself getting along with Prestigous-school prof, I'd figure it's the better long term choice.

You realize that you spent almost $500 to get rejected by 4 schools!

Honestly even if you score perfect across the board again, it's not going to make a significant difference. Your GRE scores are good enough to get you past the "cut-off", after which GRE scores are largely meaningless compared to the rest of your application

I think asking "where are previous students now?" gives you a good insight into what kinds of business connections your prof has in industry (coming from a science perspective)

I would wait a few more days, but if I were to call, you could just say "I'd like to ask on the status of my application"

Instead of changing schools, why not advisors? That way you get to keep all the "prestige" and benefits of X, while solving your problems with Professor Angry.

Y'all could end up creating a pidgin specific to your lab. seems like most labs do that with acronyms anyway.

As an undergraduate there were a few clubs with Graduate members in it too, and it mostly came off fine. As long as you are interesting and don't come across as "clearly here to scope out attractive undergrads" then people generally don't discriminate between undergrad/grad, especially if it's a social/activity oriented group.